MMA ODDS AND ENDS FOR THURSDAY: JACARE VS. OKAMI RUMORED

UFC president Dana White now revealed to reporters a middleweight bout between former Strikeforce middleweight champion Ronaldo”Jacare” Souza and Yushin Okami is being targeted for a future event. The fight is intriguing in certain ways, but it might turn out to be a huge stinker if Okami’s game plan would be to push Souza against the weapon for a quarter hour. Though Souza is a fine grappler in his own right, he’s smaller than Okami and might have issues with his size if Okami’s plan is to just wall-and-stall, he tends to do in nearly all his struggles. But in the event the grappling neutralizes each other and the fight becomes a stand-up conflict then it’s a lot more likely that Souza wins. The Brazilian’s hands have gotten much better lately and although Okami is a fine striker in his own right, his chin is quite suspect at this stage of his profession and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Souza won the battle via TKO. The fight will be nearer than the public thinks, as I am certain they’ll be all over Souza. As such, I expect”Jacare” to open at about -200 together with all the comeback on Okami being +150. I really do prefer Souza marginally because he does have the striking benefit but if the line reaches the +200 mark for Okami the bet might be on him. It is a close fight though and also the right play might just be to maneuver it completely unless the lineup retains absurd value for man. Koch vs. Poirier Added to UFC 164 Based on MMAweekly.com, a featherweight tilt between Erik Koch and Dustin Poirier has been added to the upcoming UFC 164 card, which takes place August 31 at Bradley Center in Milwaukee, WI, that’s the town Koch trains out of. This is an exceptional matchup involving two men hovering around the top 10 of this UFC featherweight division and that I expect it to become tightly contested, so much so I watch the opening gambling line being about a Select’em of -115 for each fighter. Although Koch has the edge that is striking, Poirier has the grappling advantage and as Koch showed in his last fight against Ricardo Lamas, he’s definitely susceptible to being put on his spine. But if he can keep the fight standing that he has a very good prospect of knocking”The Diamond” out. I really don’t possess a slender way yet within this fight and my bet will probably depend on where the gambling public takes the line. Thales Leites Returns to UFC Former UFC middleweight title challenger Thales Leites is coming to the UFC after winning six of his last seven fights since being cut by the promotion following back-to-back losses to Anderson Silva at UFC 97 and Alessio Sakara in UFC 101. The news was reported now by Sportv.Globo.com. Even though a lot of people are surprised by Leites coming, I for one am not. Leites is actually an extremely solid middleweight fighter and in my view he should have never been released in the first place because losing to Silva was an automatic reduction on his record and also the judges absolutely chased him contrary to Sakara. There’s not been any competition named yet for Leites in his return but expect him to compete on the UFC 163 card from one of the division’s lower-end fighters, perhaps someone from TUF 17.
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